The Central Weather Administration (CWA) would issue the nation’s emergency alert on a larger scale after many people in Taiwan complained of not getting an earthquake message on their cellphone on Wednesday when a magnitude 7.2 quake struck.
CWA said that when the temblor struck off eastern Taiwan at 7:58am that day, two separate alert text messages were issued seconds later.
The first one was for people in Hualien, Yilan, Nantou and Changhua counties, while the second was sent to people in the cities and counties of Taichung, Miaoli, Hsinchu, Yunlin, Chiayi, Tainan and Taitung, the CWA said.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Digital Affairs
There was no alert for Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung, Taoyuan, Hsinchu City, Kaohsiung and Pingtung County.
The CWA Seismology Center said that the national-level warning is only issued for quakes with a magnitude of more than five.
It said the intensity of an earthquake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, would also need to reach 4 on Taiwan’s seven-level scale for an earthquake message to be sent.
However, because the nation’s earthquake early warning system provided an estimate of the magnitude to be between 6.2 and 6.8, this impacted the estimate of the intensity level, the center said.
It said that the conditions for issuing an earthquake warning would be adjusted to accommodate a flexible margin of error, rather than just taking a single value into account, so that the public could receive the alert in a timely manner.
Although some places did not receive the alert text message, the center said it still used other methods to inform the public about the quake in places with an intensity level of more than 3 via television broadcast stations.
CWA data showed that Taiwan has so far experienced more than 535 aftershocks since Wednesday’s earthquake, which has so far killed 12 people and injured 1,123 others.
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